


In Exchange of Forever

by InsertSthMeaningful



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Universe, Cherik on Krakoa, Erik Lehnsherr Loves Charles Xavier, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Krakoan Resurrection, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:34:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26111965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsertSthMeaningful/pseuds/InsertSthMeaningful
Summary: Erik's death and resurrection shouldn't be as hard on Charles as they are.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 16
Kudos: 36





	In Exchange of Forever

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BelgianReader2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BelgianReader2/gifts).



> A smol gift for Bel, who helped me get my hands on those limited edition Cherik pins 💖 Thank youuu (and thank you for requesting Cherik on Krakoa when asked 👀 there's never enough of that on the Archive!)

Lorna catches Charles unawares just as he is walking out of a Quiet Council meeting, chatting with Ororo and Jean in hushed tones. Her hair is dishevelled, her eyes are wide and green. There is a bitter thrum of panic to her thoughts.

“Lorna?” Charles asks and makes to pull Cerebro off his head so he can face Erik’s daughter without a barrier between them, but her powers reach out and keep the telepathic enhancer helmet tightly in place. The metal creaks. “Lorna. Where is your father?”

She shakes her head, draws in a stuttering breath. “He’s not– He’s–”

When her knees give way, Jean is by her side in a heart-beat and holds her up.

“They burned him,” Lorna croaks out. “They _burned_ him until he stopped screaming and then they didn’t even–” Finally, the tears break forth from their eyes, sobs wracking her body clad in blood-speckled emerald-green.

Ororo by Charles sides turns and strides away into the Krakoan thicket, one hand clasped tightly over her mouth. Jean gasps.

“Verendi will pay,” she growls and hugs Lorna to her chest. “They will _burn_ even worse for what they’ve done to him, I swear it!”

Charles isn’t listening. He’s feeling faint, and all of a sudden his cheeks are far too hot and cool at the same time under the Cerebro helmet.

Erik is dead.

They can bring him back, of course. They have all necessary resurrection protocols at hand, with Lorna’s and the other squad team members’ certain proof of Erik’s death, Cerebro’s last download of his consciousness and a viable husk already tucked away in a quiet corner of the Arbor Magna Hatchery. Members of the Quiet Council receive prioritised treatment in case of passing, after all.

And yet…

 _Erik is dead_. Charles has indeed thought he had felt an odd jolt rattle through his system when he was going over Sage’s files of unregistered mutants for X-Factor earlier. _Erik is dead_. He had written it off as a one-time occurrence then. _Erik is dead_. But it had not just been any ordinary death he had felt.

Erik is dead. Erik, Charles’ dearest, oldest friend, his ally and enemy and amiable contradictor, the man he has both admired and hated with an uncanny passion over the course of too many lifetimes, is gone. Passed away. Deceased.

All of Charles’ thoughts taste like ash on his tongue.

“I just need to go pick up some things at House of M,” he says, his voice infinitely more composed than he really feels. “Wait for me at the Hatchery. We’ll start the resurrection process immediately.”

When Charles comes up to Arbor Magna, Erik’s favourite purple cape and a pair of his silk pyjamas piled high in his arms, The Five are already weaving their magic. With joined hands, they form a circle around the golden egg in which Erik’s future body is still slumbering, and Hope unites them in the last step of its growth.

Quite understandably, Erik’s husk is being rushed through the resurrection process – he is one of the most prominent leaders of their mutant nation after all, and to let news of his passing trickle through into the human world would be to face a new wave of attempts at infiltration.

Lorna is standing off by the side, and Charles remembers that time they brought Jean and Scott and the others back after their more or less successful mission to destroy Orchis’ Mother Mold. Erik had been right beside Lorna then while Charles had been waiting for his X-Men to burst from their shells, explaining every last detail of the resurrection process to his daughter with that serene look of contentment he always got when he was talking to one of his children. So proud, so fierce, so invincible. So breath-takingly beautiful Charles had been distracted enough to almost put Jean’s consciousness into Mystique’s body.

Only this time, Erik isn’t around to comfort Lorna and talk her through step by step. This time, it is he himself curled up in the egg, surrounded by The Five as their powers flare.

Charles shouldn’t be nervous. The retrieving of mutant brothers and sisters has been put into action with flawless results countless times before already – barring the unfortunate case of Kate Pryde with whom they have indeed experienced certain difficulties – so why shouldn’t it come just as easily now? It has been thoroughly tested, tinkered with, ameliorated. It will work. It _has_ to work.

Except that Charles knows Erik has never been one to make anything easy, ever. He sighs quietly under his breath.

Finally, The Five break away from their trance-like state and step apart, smiling to each other like they just performed a miracle – which really, they have. Charles nods to them and watches benevolently as they file out one after the other. It seems the suggestion to leave after their work was done - a harmless nudge he has planted inconspicuously into their brains - is going into effect.

Now, there remains only Lorna to deal with. Just like her father, she is in part protected by her mutation’s inherent affinity for creating magnetic fields subconsciously, shielding her mind against almost any mental intrusions.

Charles gets up wordlessly from where he has been sitting down on one of the roots lining the Hatchery’s walls, Erik’s cape in hand. His fingers dig into the atrociously coloured fabric, white-knuckled, as he strides over to the pulsating egg inside which a vague shape is slowly uncurling.

Lorna behind him lets out a sudden gagging sound, and then there is only the precipitated pitter-patter of her feet on the floor as she hurries from the room. The memory of her father’s death is too fresh after all – just what Charles had counted on.

He kneels down a few feet from the shimmering egg and calls softly with the quiet of his mind.

At first, there is nothing.

Then, with the sudden brilliance of a hundred collapsing suns, the powers of Erik’s husk flare out, cracking the eggshell open as they make the air shimmer and the magnetic fields twist, and ere Charles knows it, the sphere has collapsed and revealed its precious contents.

The body is slick, covered in nothing but gold-shimmering goo. It heaves in a few deep, desperate breaths before it gets on hands and knees and starts crawling towards Charles as though pulled towards him by an invisible string, by an uncanny force – by that kind of inherent attraction they’ve always held for each other and always will, magnetic and hypnotising. Its petal-white hair is plastered to its scalp.

Charles receives it with open arms and wraps it in Erik’s cape. He takes a few heart-beats just to feel this bare, solid shell of a man in his embrace, feel its unconditional trust and pliant mindlessness as it curls into him and slots its chin under his head, eyes still glued shut. It’s smearing resurrection liquid onto his skin-tight bodysuit, but he really couldn’t care less.

“Oh, my sweet darling,” he mutters, and then he gives in to the insistent itch at the back of his head where his own mind bleeds into the millions of others stored in Cerebro and leans down to put his lips to those of the husk.

The essence of Erik returns to his body with a shuddering gasp.

Retching and coughing in Charles’ arms, steel-grey eyes shooting open, his features twist up in pain, then recognition. Charles coos soft, soothing nothings and tucks the magenta cape tighter around his old friend’s broad frame, until the shivering abates and Erik starts to take smooth, even breaths. His body feels odd in Charles' grasp.

“Charles,” is the first thing Erik says, his voice one painful croak, and then, “How did it happen?”

Charles hesitates. Erik was there during Kate’s burial at sea, when Pyro’s flames consumed her body in front of everyone’s eyes. But this… this is different.

“What is the last thing you remember?” he asks elusively.

Still tucked against his chest, dripping wet hair tickling Charles’ chin, Erik tenses. “Tea,” he whispers and swallows. It sounds like it hurts. “We were having tea at House of X. It was morning, and you pointed out how the first flowers of autumn were breaking into blossom, and I laughed and told you that there would never be such a pesky thing as autumn on Krakoa. Everything after that is… nebulous.”

“Ah. That was three days before you and your team left to take out a Verendi merchant base in Croatia.” Relieved, Charles sighs and busses as kiss onto his old friend’s hairline. “Cerebro swept the world for its weekly backup that day. You were… killed in action.”

“Did we succeed?”

“You did. And you fought wonderfully, my dear, so I and Krakoa could lift you up when it was all over,” Charles murmurs. “Lorna can tell you more after we get you cleaned up, yes?”

And as Erik nods, still leaning into him with his mind screaming exhaustion, Charles understands what has been disturbing him so – The bare plains of Erik’s back and chest and arms are smooth, like freshly hewn marble.

Erik’s countless scars, accumulated over all his lifetimes like stars in the sky, have disappeared.

There is no big feast, no big celebration upon Erik’s return – as it is, he has only been gone for a few hours, and most mutants on the island haven’t even heard of his little incident yet. But Lorna runs up to her father and hugs him tightly, and Ororo pats him on the back, smiling. Then, Charles ushers him away for a little quiet and privacy in the House of M.

They don’t talk much. Erik is so tired he can barely even stand, and Charles is so thrown off by this unusual occurrence that he almost spills scalding petal tea all over his lap. When Erik proposes they go to bed early he is more than happy to immediately agree, and it doesn’t take long for his old friend to seek solace in his arms before slipping away into a deep, dreamless sleep.

A few minutes after Erik’s breathing has evened out, Charles takes off his reading glasses and dims the light. He doesn’t switch it off, mind you – he wants to see Erik; see the man he brought back from the dead only hours ago; see how his chest expands and feel how his heart beats and sense how his mind hums with serene oblivion.

He falls asleep like this, staring down at Erik. And in the middle of the night, he jolts awake with a cry of pain perched on his lips.

His skin. His skin is itching, no, _burning_ , and he can _feel_ it peel off as he is consumed by flames, as blisters spring up on the palm of his hands and it’s searing, _searing_ , the pain, the heat, his throat so dry he can’t even scream–

Erik is gripping his shoulders, shaking him until his hearing returns.

“Charles,” he says, voice tinted lime-green with panic, “Charles, what is it? Please, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean–”

“Nothing. It’s nothing, Erik.” Charles takes Erik’s hands in his, puts them to his lips in a desperate attempt to stop himself from shaking. “I just– There must have been something off with the resurrection process. Cerebro’s reach is so vast it might have latched onto your last dying moments – or rather _I_ must have latched onto you and downloaded it without knowing and then put it back together with your essence. Erik dear, _I_ am sorry. You don’t deserve to remember this pain, this suffering–”

The look on Erik’s face in the dim light makes the words die on his tongue.

“Charles, I did it for _you_ ,” his old friend breathes. “I knew what I was getting myself into. Cerebro, Arbor Magna, The Five – it’s all still so new, don’t blame yourself for this slip-up. For Krakoa, for you, I will shoulder all you give me and more if need be.”

And Erik means it. Charles can feel all of it, Erik’s earnestness, his willingness to sacrifice himself if only it meant that Charles and Krakoa could endure.

“But you should not have to,” he whispers, and even as he says it, he knows he is wrong.

They have achieved Promethean feats. They have achieved godhood. So what is a little pain in exchange of forever?

Erik just smiles, and Charles goes easily when he pulls him into a kiss. His lips taste of the Krakoan flower tea Charles brewed for him and of the bitter remnants of a nightmare.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it! If you did, please consider leaving kudos and a comment. It doesn't have to be anything elaborate, just a "+kudos" or a "loved it!" would make my day!!! It means so much to an author to see people take the time to actually type out words instead of simply hitting one (1) button, and it's a very easy way to make us writers - who dedicate so much of our free time to create content for you - happy!


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